One afternoon while we were home, we went to visit the elementary school where Kevin's mom teaches 2nd grade students. We put together a short presentation about Brazil and shared some of our experiences with them. While I'm pretty sure they liked the pictures of beautiful waterfalls and getting to pass around real Brazilian money, I'm certain they were most entertained by the creatures we have here and the fact that the students only go to school for half a day!! This little guy (about 6 inches in length) got a lot of "Ewws!" and "No ways!"
They weren't as impressed with this disgusting fellow until I told them he was crawling next to my bedpost. Then their eyes widened a little!
Thanks to Kevin, we had a pretty sweet Power Point presentation, complete with Google Earth zooming in on the kids' school and then flying all the way to our little town in southern Brazil. It really was fun to share with the kids. They were great listeners and seemed genuinely interested in what we had to say. We started the presentation by greeting them in Portuguese and speaking a few sentences. We got the reaction we wanted from most of the kids - frowns and confusion. They had no idea what we were saying. However, a little Hispanic boy in the front translated for me when I said, "Vamos comecar!" "Let's get started," he said. Funny. Portuguese and Spanish have several similarities, so I wasn't surprised that he knew some of what I was saying. Our point was to make the kids feel like we felt when we arrived here. We really didn't know the language and we were uncomfortable and confused quite a bit of the time. With time, we learned not only the language, but the culture and people as well. At the end of our presentation, we taught the kids two simple words that are used every day, "Oi," (Hi) and "Tchau!" (Bye). Then I told them if they wanted to be cute, they could say tchau twice. When school was out, the kids who had been in our presentation could be heard down the hallway and out to the schoolbus!! "Tchau, tchau!! Tchau, tchau!!" I love how excited they were to speak another language!
Last week we got the cutest little package in the mail. The kids we had presented to had made us thank you cards and we had so much fun reading them! A couple of my favorites were:
"Dear Emma, Sandi, Kevin, Thank you so much for coming and teaching me all that stuff and bye I mean tchau."
"Dear Kevin Sandy Emma, Obrigada for teaching me portuguese. The cockroaches were N-A-S-T-Y! It must be butiful in Brazil. Butifull!"
"Oi Dear Sandie e Kevin. I have a rabit so if you come over you can hold him His name is King Tut."
I love that age! So much energy, so creative, so easy to entertain. After we left, they learned two more Portuguese words from Kevin's mom, "Obrigada" (thank you) and "e" (and). It's so true that kids can pick up a language easier than adults. Their minds are little sponges, just waiting to absorb any new information they hear or see. I hope they learned a little bit that day and I hope they remember that the world is a very big place with so much diversity. I love that we were able to share a bit of our lives here with them!
